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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200621">Twelve Minutes to Midnight.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/RealUnicornFrappuchino'>RealUnicornFrappuchino (orphan_account)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Baz loves Simon, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Not In Chronological Order, Rivals to Friends to Lovers, historical fiction - Freeform, simon loves baz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:34:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,298</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200621</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/RealUnicornFrappuchino</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s nobody’s business but their own. A romance in twelve parts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Carry On Through The Ages 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Twelve Minutes to Midnight.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>IX</b>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They shelled the hell out of Snow’s section on the day Captain Grimm-Pitch was declared missing in action.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Flares arced up over the salient, spilling bloody light over the mud and the smoke and the drizzling rain, refracting and reflecting a thousand times in the mist that hung thick in the air, and the whole of the earth below lit up as if awash with red. The bombardment thundered over his head, whistling and snapping like some wild beast, a dragon of steel wheeling in the air above the front line, and Snow went out to his section with a rifle in his hands and a mage’s wand tucked in his pocket, and took over sentry duty from the exhausted private who manned the post. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was almost unheard of for an officer to do so, never mind one such as Snow. The ground shook, and Snow watched blankly, engulfed in one of those deafening silences he seemed so fond of. His father was an MP and a veteran besides, having proven himself in the second boer war a decade before, and it was against his deepest wishes that Captain Snow was on the front lines at all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Despite his father’s misgivings, however, it seemed that Snow was made to be a war hero. His men called him </span>
  <em>
    <span>Simon</span>
  </em>
  <span>, called him the maddest bastard this side of the channel; but did so with the utmost respect. Not one of them would speak ill of him or covet his place; not  Simon Snow, who bought fresh scones and jam and good french bread back to them every time he was called away on leave, and who had put himself in the medic’s tent too many times on their account. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nobody disturbed Snow when he was on duty. The sky was bloody, and Snow stared out over no-man’s land and said nothing, and did not move: not even as death joined him in the mud.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Not a single man disturbed him that night. It was nobody’s business but his own.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>II</b>
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The men couldn’t believe their eyes when Captain Snow pulled a sword from thin air on another occasion, as they flooded over the top in a crush of desperate bodies and shrieking whistles, bullets smacking the belly out of the air like a hailstorm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Few of them saw it, but most lived to tell the tale. They saw how Snow had brought them their ration of rum for liquid courage, had called the time on his watch and put the silver whistle to his lips, and how he had leapt upwards at the first blast, scrambling six feet up the ladder and slogging through yet more mud. They would speak of how words of encouragement had fallen from Snow’s lips with startling urgency when he found them sheltering in their shell-holes, and how they had slowly felt wounds closing beneath torn tunics, and broken bones slowly healing over. It had been painful, and they would later remember hearing Snow cursing himself under his breath for a job done shoddily. They would talk of a sabre appearing in his hands as he led the charge with a yell  - </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, a broadsword</span>
  </em>
  <span> - shining silver in the glare of the unforgiving sunrise. They would talk of him in awe. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>By the next time they were put on leave, most of them had been sent home. They would not return to see the war out. And as they left; in shambling lines of walking wounded, on stretchers and ambulance-carts, back behind the lines and away to England again, they thanked their captain, convinced that Simon Snow was some kind of magic.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Captain Grimm-Pitch had just raised his brow, watching from the command lines as Snow fought through the teeth of hell, and guided his men out to the other side.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>III</b>
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On another occasion, a gas shell had come down on them while they were posted in a support trench, and the men had shouted and scrambled for their masks as a cloud of yellow swept through the lines. Snow had left the officer’s dugouts immediately, calling for </span>
  <b>a breath of fresh air</b>
  <span>, and the gas passed them by, a sudden wind turning it back on the Enemy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Captain Grimm-Pitch had followed him out past the curtain, pale as always, helmet forgotten as he followed in Snow’s footsteps to check on the men with a Webley in his hand. Together they ran full tilt - one always on the other’s heels, hurdling debris and smashed-in duckboards, matching wands clutched in shaking fists. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Around them, the exhausted ranks reformed and the big guns thundered on, and the two captains ran helter-skelter, ignoring the shouts around them. It didn’t look like France any more, and perhaps it never was. The smell of smoke lingered like a lazy ghost, and the drizzle was like ice, rivulets of clammy water dripping off the brims of their helmets and down their backs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Neither of them spared the other a glance, not really; but by the end of it the men were fine, all asleep in their bunks, and Snow took sentry duty. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It would be the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> ***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>V</b>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch the Third </span>
  <em>
    <span>despised</span>
  </em>
  <span> France. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The rain was warm, but it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>rain</span>
  </em>
  <span> - it got everywhere, and after a while the chill would be unshakeable like a bone-deep frost. He hadn’t been properly warm or dry since he’d first arrived. They all had lice - He’d wanted to spell the foul things away as soon as they appeared, but then the others would catch on, and he’d be left running a laundry service for them all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Besides. The men trusted an officer more if they saw him suffering alongside them, wracked by the same coughs and wasting away like the rest. It was bad enough that he was a posh young Oxford toff in their eyes. To do more would seem inhumane, after all the progress he had made. His company had started to call him </span>
  <em>
    <span>Baz</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he has to smile at the familiarity, even if it’s intended as a jest.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Still. The warm, damp rain always crept in, and chilled him to the bone every time. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the dugout it was marginally better, in the cramped and tobacco-stained air. Overhead, the guns roared on and on and on, and the other officers around the rough table stared at their week-old newspapers and tattered hands of cards with a grim, forced determination. He felt a calm kind of panic -  he wanted to shout, to break the fragile bubble of ignorant peace and ask if they knew yet that they were all dead men, but he refrained. Pitches had more decorum than that, and the guns were only attacking each other.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wouldn’t be shown up by the Normals. He wouldn’t break first. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Manchester Guardian, Pitch?” Snow says, offering a damp and out-of-date newspaper across the table. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Snow. Beautiful, heroic Captain Snow. Snow, his golden curls glowing dimly in the lamplight, turning him dull and grey and lifeless in comparison, whose rough voice always made something curl warmly in the pit of Baz’s stomach. Snow’s stunning - Baz knows it, knows how the barmaids chase him when he’s on leave. But he never shows interest in them, which probably means he has a sweetheart waiting for him back in Blighty. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Snow’s from somewhere in Lancashire - his accent is thick with it, and surely there’s some rosy-cheeked maiden waiting for him there with open arms. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(Baz can’t help but hope that maybe they are of the same sort, and then hates himself for wishing.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, thanks.” Baz says, batting the wad of paper aside and standing. “I think I’ll check on my section, if it’s all the same.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Rest. They’ll be fine for a few hours.” Snow says, as if he hadn’t cast a </span>
  <b>safe and sound</b>
  <span> over them that night, fearing a fierce shelling after nearly two days with no bombardment and no attacks. Snow isn’t a Mage as far as Baz knows, but his easy confidence is startlingly familiar, and Baz is wracked with sudden fear.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I can’t.” Baz admits, and mounts the ladder. Behind him, he hears another officer speak, and Snow shush him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Unsociable fellow.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He has a right to be. Did you hear what he did? Came out of no-man’s land with -“</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Baz leaves before he hears any more, and checks his spells. The men are fine that night.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>VII</b>
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s three years into the war when Snow proposes a truce between them. They’re both on leave. The whole of Ypres is a mess, Flanders besides; and the town of Poperinghe even more so, and they sit in a ramshackle pub with plates of bread and cheese between them. Snow isn’t smoking, and Baz is glad for it, knowing how one stray ember could light him up like a bar of magnesium. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re of the same age, here and now. They look older. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Baz hates himself for how quickly he agrees, and they shake hands, and part.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>I</b>
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he first arrived in France, Simon had thought Captain Grimm-Pitch a spy. He’d thought it true, that first Christmas. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had snowed, and Pitch had cocked his head to the side and swore, loudly, asking: “Are they serious?” as the singing started. The words to </span>
  <em>
    <span>Stille Nacht </span>
  </em>
  <span>had echoed around them in a singular moment of peace, and already the Germans were throwing things - gifts, boxes of cigarettes and food - and marching out onto the dead land between them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pitch had smiled then, and set the example. He put away his gun and went to meet them, hand outstretched.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a Christmas miracle. It was an act of magic. It would never happen again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Simon could never be sure whether he loved Pitch, or hated him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <b>XI</b>
</p><p>
  <span>When it ends, Snow buys a cottage; and Baz - left with a limp from that last failed raid - moves in immediately. They cast enough spells so that the neighbours don’t talk. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the evenings, Baz hunts, and regrets the blood on his hands, and Snow - Simon, dear Simon, helps him clean it off. Baz buys a motorcar; a shiny Rolls Royce with gleaming paint, and Snow learns to drive it with a grin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The war seems far away and far too close all at once. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>IV</b>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baz finds the sentry while looking for blood; tangled in barbed-wire and left for dead, shot seven times and bleeding. One of Snow’s men, young, crying for his mother.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Shots rang out, as shots were wont to do, and he cursed himself for not finding some lark or rat beforehand, fangs straining against his gums. He gritted his teeth and pulled the dying boy backwards, towards a shell-hole, cursing and slipping in the deep, filthy water. His nerves were short and could take no more, and he jumped up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Give it a fucking rest!" he screamed at the enemy lines, noting with grim satisfaction the sniper's sudden death at the hands of one of their own marksmen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He picked the boy up easily and sprinted back, healing him as he ran with what little strength he could find, the spells falling from his lips with little thought as the wounds slowly closed over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Sorry," the boy whispered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"It's fine. You’re not dying."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You’re. . You - Sir!"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I said you're not fucking dying. Cut that out, right now." He snarled, and the boy recoiled and fell silent, looking wide-eyed at the fangs that were surely showing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His men pulled them to safety, and Baz collapsed into a bunk-hole out of the way, and drained one of the messenger-dogs while it slept. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They called him a hero, after that. And Snow thanked him, hands fiddling awkwardly with the hem of his tunic, and took sentry duty himself far more often. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>VI</b>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When a stray shell came down on the officer’s dugout, Snow had lit up with anger. Baz had seen him, trapped beneath a fallen beam with his arm at an awkward angle, and without thinking, had used a </span>
  <b>light as a feather </b>
  <span>to lift it and set it back into place. The place was empty, aside from them, and Snow had looked at him in surprise. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <b>Good as new.</b>
  <span>” Baz had said, gesturing lazily at Snow’s broken arm and his own broken nose. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re a mage, too?” Snow had asked, then, and suddenly it all made sense.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>VIII</b>
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Simon first kissed Baz, it had been in the middle of no-man’s land. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were stranded, left behind after a sortie and losing hope, and he’d been contemplating setting a fire and letting himself burn. And Snow, teeth chattering, had stopped up his angry mouth with his own, and kissed him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were rescued, and sent on leave, as if it would help. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <b>X</b>
</p><p>
  <span>Snow finds him, after everything. Stranded again in no-man’s land, surrounded by numpties, of all things. And Snow had fought through them as the shells and mud rained down, and had carried him back. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He knows they would have already sent the telegram home, and he’s weak, so weak that he can hardly lift his head. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Baz sees Snow, and kisses him, because even if they don’t make it out, they can have this. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <b>XII</b>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, they make it out. They see the war out, all four bloody years of it, and they make it out. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And they’re alive, gloriously alive. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I love you.” Baz finally tells Snow, the admission tearing itself free at last, and Snow kisses him, again and again and again, until neither of them are afraid of the bombs any more. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>England is quiet. There is mud beneath their fingernails, and when they finally cross the channel, they do so holding hands.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> It’s nobody’s business but their own.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
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